


In Smoke and Ash

by seven_of_cups



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Mentioned Clara Oswin Oswald, POV Missy (Doctor Who), Slow Dancing, Spoilers for Episode s09e02: The Witch's Familiar, and the doctor is patient, emotions....are a thing, missy doesn't know how emotions work let alone how to process them, missy just drops in like an old friend because she is, missy/doctor if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 15:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21199976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seven_of_cups/pseuds/seven_of_cups
Summary: Missy wasn’t being demonized or brushed aside. She was being dissected, and the things she didn’t say were being listened to. And it scared her more than she cared to admit. What happened to her in the future, the Doctor’s past, how long had it been since Skaro? “Why do you keep coming here...Missy? Why now?”





	In Smoke and Ash

**Author's Note:**

> Took this from a prompt I got on tumblr asking for a slow dance between Missy and 13 and ran pretty far with it. Set in between the Witch's Familiar and the Vault. 
> 
> Find me on tumblr at missywhomst and send me prompts!

Missy dropped in from time to time, picking through the wreckage the Doctor left behind in order to find her. Bread crumbs across the universe, blind to her own body count, a conscious act of denial that Missy found endlessly amusing. And it always startled the Doctor when Missy knocked on her door. Whether it be in the middle of London or on the seventh moon of Pyronis, she always blinked and stepped back like she was seeing a ghost. And, really, wasn’t she always?

But the Doctor granted her entrance to the TARDIS every time, stepped back and opened her arm to the humming of the ship, its welcome embrace. The Doctor’s TARDIS had always had an attitude, a museum piece that refused to gather dust. Much like the Doctor. Must like her. Missy could sense it, curled her lip at it, the bond she had to her ship—and the ship to her—was nearly suffocating. And the Doctor, with her blonde bob and silly little suspenders, watched her with eyes so different and maddeningly the same. There was a gentleness to her now, a hesitant sort of curiosity, hopeful even, that made Missy deeply uncomfortable. It was the coldness, the mistrustful angry stare of her previous incarnation shining beneath the surface that Missy recognized, could so easily settle into. 

She didn’t know why she came, not really, just showed up at the Doctor’s door with a sly smile and attentive eyes, prodding into her life and her TARDIS with just enough urgency to take the focus off herself. Taking jabs at the Doctor, appraising her, cataloguing her, aloof and distant the way she’d been with Clara and the Cybermen and, oh, the Daleks. What a fun adventure that had been. The fire in the Doctor’s eyes. The fear in Clara’s, the exhausted way she slumped and cried and shook, and Missy fed off that fear, that anger. 

Missy wasn’t sure why she’d stumbled across the Doctor’s new face instead of those angry eyebrows and magician’s coat. That Scottish accent was for him, not her. It had been a shock at first, admittedly, that blue door swinging open to someone blonder and half a foot shorter than she was expecting. She’d laughed at her, an absurd little chuckle, amusement dancing in her eyes as she eyed this new Doctor. _ Well isn’t this quaint, _ she remembered saying, a sly grin on her cheeks. But the way the Doctor stared back at her, that look, told Missy she certainly didn’t belong there. And she pushed down the growing pit in her stomach by pushing her way into the TARDIS. 

She never expected anything, no demands, no plots to burn suns or decimate planets. She did that on her own time now. Well, had been since she’d last seen the Doctor, Clara hooked up to that Dalek and those eyebrows looking particularly murderous. And she just sauntered away, bored with the Doctor’s fawning, bored with Clara’s self pity, bored of the Daleks dissolving the walls around them. She was interested in surviving, escaping, wanting to see if the Doctor would snap when they met again. She liked pushing him, getting him angry, making him see things the way she did. In smoke and ash. But meeting the Doctor now, coming nearly eye to eye instead of eye to chest, seeing the absolutely ridiculous way she scrunched her nose, how she talked, so wide eyed, took Missy aback. 

It reminded her of something long ago, too distant to recall with more than a glimpse, a feeling. Gallifrey. The early days at the Academy. The Doctor hadn’t always been angry with the school, the High Council, the war room. Back then, the Doctor’s first face, he’d been such a dreamer, an idealistic fool, a poet. She saw that in this face, the eyes, the smile, the patience. Missy wondered sometimes how far away that pain was for her, or was it just sitting there festering under the surface? 

“Well isn’t this quaint,” she lilted, leaning back and sweeping her eyes up this new body, a grin lazy on her lips. The Doctor stood frozen for a long moment, and Missy could nearly feel the cold tingle running up her spine. 

“Missy, what are you doing here?” the Doctor asked, voice so much higher than eyebrows, Northern, brows furrowed and lips parted, genuinely confused, a bit worried, and oh, what was that? Fear? It made Missy chuckle, just a quick exhale out her nose with half a smile. 

“Came to visit. What else? Or am I not allowed to do that anymore?” she feigned sadness, sticking her bottom lip out, and the Doctor stared at her for a moment, blank, then scoffed and shook her head, shifting her weight to the other foot. 

“You never just _ visit_.” She had her body blocking the entrance to her TARDIS, protective, a bit angry. Or maybe resolute was the better word. But Missy just couldn’t get over how small she was. What a big word, _ Doctor_, packed into such a tiny frame. Missy could snap those collar bones like twigs. 

“_Fine_,” she clipped and then sighed, “I was curious to see if Clara had suffered any..._ill effects_...being wired into that Dalek casing. All those _tendrils _feeding into her little mind,” Missy wiggled her fingers, scrunched up her shoulders and nose, and she could see the Doctor on the verge of curling her lip. Anger welling up at the disrespect. There was the Doctor she knew. All those faces and she never changed. 

“Clara was fine,” she answered, voice level. Missy raised her brow.

“Not travelling with you anymore, eh, Doctor? That’s the trouble with humans. Such short lifespans. Die at the _drop _of a hat.” She snapped her fingers, and the Doctor’s nostrils flared. 

“What do you want, Missy?” Missy faltered at the question, just for a moment, but certainly long enough for the Doctor to notice. One of the last things she’d said to the Doctor was ringing in her ears. _The friend inside the enemy, the enemy inside the friend_. She decided to smile again. 

“Afraid I’ve got a trick up my sleeve?” 

“You usually do,” the Doctor breathed, but there was some release in the way she said it, a tension broken. A weary sort of acceptance. And she eyed Missy for a moment, assessed something, make some calculation of risk in her head. “As long as you promise not to blow anything up, you can come in.”

Missy kept her expression even. The Doctor hadn’t allowed her this courtesy in a long time. What face had it been? They all blended together. Certainly before the Time War. Eyebrows and Matchstick Man wouldn’t have trusted her—or him—as far as he could throw her. She wondered just how long it had been since this face had seen her. How much time had passed for the Doctor’s anger to melt into bitter nostalgia, into a _ do come in_. 

“About bloody time,” she said instead. 

Then they had tea. And they didn’t really talk. Timelines and all that nonsense. But she watched the Doctor, and the Doctor watched her, and it was all very boring, very familiar. It wasn’t as though Missy was curious about her future or, frankly, the Doctor’s. No it was right then, that moment, that she was interested in. She always had been about that dance they did, older than time itself. The charged stares, beating around the bush, half truths, and bitter lies. And she got impatient. So she left the Doctor and her new console room, wandered around, found herself bored, and came back. 

She’d told the Doctor and his eyebrows that she wanted her friend back, voice cracking in a cemetery of Cybermen. She didn’t think he’d listened. Not to her words or the screaming behind her watery eyes. Especially not after she gave him an army. Instead, he kissed her and told her he wasn’t a good man. She knew. And she was angry with him for it until she’d stuck Clara in a Dalek and watched her beg, panicked tears streaming down her cheeks. Little poppet exhausted from the toll. She watched him seethe and boil and stare right into Clara’s eyes, and when he told her to run she told him it had always been him who did the running. And then she turned her back, and she sauntered away. He never saw her, never understood. But at least she had gotten him to listen, just for a moment. 

And the farther she got away from him, the more she wanted to talk to him, needed to. With less hostages this time, perhaps. Face to face and empty handed. Like the old days. But she knew he’d be angry when she found her way back to him. He was always holding some grudge or another. So she gave him time, a little space, and she wandered. Escaped the Daleks and had her own fun. When she found the Doctor again, star earrings and a rainbow striped shirt, softer and smaller than eyebrows could ever dream of, Missy didn’t know how to proceed. This Doctor was so far removed from Missy’s present moment that it seemed wrong to talk about it all, about anything really. But it was precisely that that kept Missy cycling back to her. And after a while, though it was shorter than she realized, that just started to feel normal. 

The Doctor never asked why she came to visit, popping in and staying for days at a time, wandering the TARDIS nearly aimless, some restless spirit wading in her own agitation. And when they spoke it was like this, a dance so delicate Missy feared to breathe. But she never strayed from that aloof pridefulness—the stalking of prey—that had faded to subtlety by now. She was sure the Doctor could see it, the softness she’d been degraded to, was running from. The problem was, she always ran straight to the Doctor. And she hated herself for it every damn time. 

It was the slow quiet moments that tripped her, scuffed her knees and tore up her palms. The betrayed, confused sort of surprise that happens to children when they don’t know it’s possible to be hurt. Missy always felt it the most sitting in the Doctor’s library, nestled deep in the TARDIS. Time passing, the progression of days, the melting of suns and stars, had never quite existed there, but on Earth in the places the Doctor clinged to, it was nearing twilight. 

Missy wasn’t much of a drinker, and it surprised her to find that out when she regenerated. The Master had used alcohol to run away, sometimes, when the drums took over, when he really thought he might be going mad this time. Drowning the hysterical voice in his head with the sweet cedar smell of whiskey. For Missy, drinking made things worse, tipped the world on its axis, and nothing seemed to make sense, moving too slow, too disjointed. And the only way she kept her sanity these days was by putting everything in tight, dark boxes. Though on occasion there was a sweet spot, tipsy and warm and bordering on hazy, when she could still taste the grapes in the wine and before her mouth got dry. She tipped the wine that was left in her glass down, watching it swirl, a deep red, deeper than blood. 

“Don’t you spill that, Missy,” the Doctor warned playfully, appearing in the doorway quick as a phantom, and Missy jumped. Just a little. And closed her eyes a half beat longer than a blink. She breathed, again, slow and deep enough to quiet her hearts. 

“Please,” Missy scoffed, dragging her eyes to the Doctor. “I have better coordination in my _pinky _finger than you’ve got in your whole _ body_.” 

“Is that a challenge?” the Doctor inquired, folding her arms over her chest and sauntering in towards her. 

“Even if it was, you’ve never been one for the _ reckless abandon _ of gambling, Doctor. Not in any of your faces,” Missy countered, one leg folded over the other, ankle lolling like a plaything.

The Doctor raised her brow, a small purse of her lips, and ceded Missy a nod. “And you’ve never been one to back down from a threat.” 

“Was it a threat? Oh dear, I meant it as an insult. A bit awkward now,” Missy winced and clicked her tongue, a heavy frown pulling down her lips. The Doctor rolled her eyes and stole the glass, which had been dangling precariously off the edge of the couch, from between Missy’s fingers. The Doctor gulped the rest of the wine and set the glass on the end table, and then it was Missy’s turn to raise her brow. 

“I thought you didn’t drink.” 

“No, I’m just a lightweight this time ‘round. There’s a difference,” the Doctor corrected, and it earned her a smirk. Missy watched as the Doctor wandered to the record player across from the couch, followed her with quick steady eyes. The Doctor hummed softly to the tune, a smile creeping onto her lips, and she looked back to Missy with an odd expression on her face. Something between nostalgia and curiosity, some kind of yearning to step forward. And she did, then, so soft and nearly embarrassed as she held out her hand to Missy. “Care to dance?” Missy watched the Doctor’s face flush and laughed, a stunned sort of absurdity that fell from her in rolling waves. 

“That’s funny,” she encouraged, No,” she said as her face dropped and she shook her head, eyeing the Doctor up and down. 

“Oh, come on, we used to dance,” the Doctor whined, and Missy rolled her eyes, slouching against the arm of the couch and pressing her chin into her palm. 

“At the Academy. As _ children_. Eons ago. Besides you can’t ruin a good dance with the half strung droning of some self pitying sap,” Missy protested, waving a hand as if to indicate her point. 

“You think this is a _ sad _ song?” the Doctor clarified, gesturing back to the turntable, confused. The music that was drifting from it was drooping and slow, the way blood trickles down skin in fat drops. “I’d say drowsy, if _ anything_.”

“Got that right. I’m falling asleep listening to it,” Missy protested. The Doctor’s eyes were on her then, sparkling and wonderfilled. The unbearably soft way she got when she could see into someone, into Missy. And Missy squirmed, just a bit, pressing her lips together trying to quiet the screaming ringing in her ears. 

“No, Missy, I meant _ nostalgic _ drowsy,” she clarified, quickly brushing blonde hair behind her ear. “Reminds me of those cold autumn days we used to sit and watch the rain at the Academy,” the Doctor gasped a laugh then, a smile breaking her face, but it was pained and hesitant. 

Missy remembered those days through the haze of their childhoods. One of those rare reprieves from the fear. The quiet, steady afternoons of drifting down into some shared imagination, the small sweet psychic links they formed in those stuffy Academy rooms. “All we did was invent ghosts,” she shook her head, stubborn, and the Doctor huffed and rolled her eyes, pulling Missy to her feet in one swift motion. Missy stumbled forward in her laced boots. 

“I know you’re incapable of dancing to anything but the burning of suns and the screaming of a thousand planets, but, please, just try. For me,” she breathed, eyes searching Missy’s, holding her hands warm and firm in hers. Missy’s mouth fell open, just a bit, and she felt that tingle between their skin and the fiery knot in her stomach, some strange fear that gripped her. And as the Doctor pulled her closer, wrapping an ungodly warm arm around her waist, resting her fingers on her back, a near possessive pulling on her clothes, Missy tensed. Her other hand came up to cradle Missy’s at shoulder level, and Missy found her own hand on the Doctor’s small shoulder, suspenders so elastic under Missy’s fingertips. 

The Doctor led her into a gentle sway, humming along to the music, and Missy frowned, then, as she noticed those little things only visible from very close up. How there were permanent little crow’s feet by her eyes, the remnants of her laughter and that incessant smile. How her lashes were darker, up close, and how she smelled like tea tree and wildflowers and that warm, muffled smell of crackled time. It seemed to seep into the very fabric of Missy’s clothes, that blouse and long skirt she was so fond of in this body. Then the Doctor, grasping onto Missy’s lower back, brought her closer through the arch of a sway to the right, pulling her in as they drifted to the left. Missy’s arm came around the Doctor’s shoulders, draped over her in an embarrassing display of submission. 

“Don’t run, Missy,” the Doctor breathed, moving her head back to look Missy in the eyes. “I can feel you tensing.”

“This isn’t something I..._ do_,” Missy admitted in a voice softer than she’d anticipated.

“You _ used _ to. Before everything went to hell,” the Doctor chuckled, breath coming out quick on Missy’s cheek. “Remember Xanthur Four? You danced with me the whole night on that moon.”

“_You_ stole the President’s wife,” Missy countered, her fingers dipping under the straps of the Doctor’s suspenders, such small shoulders. "_You_ _used_ to be fun. See, things change.” 

“Oi, I’m _ extremely _ fun!” 

“Your idea is _ fun _ is going to an anti-grav trampoline park. Used to be a bit more anarchistic. _ That’s _ when you were fun.” 

“Missy,” the Doctor sighed, “you’re exhausting. What’s so scary about dancing with me, anyway? Aren’t I supposed to be the one scared of you?” She drifted closer, cheeks brushing, so Missy couldn’t look at her. “Why are you the one knocking on my door asking for asylum?”

“_Asylum_?” Missy echoed, disgusted. 

“Just listen, will you?” Missy huffed and shook her head, blinking away the Doctor’s blonde hairs from her eyes. And the Doctor wasn’t even attacking her. With any face, on any planet, before and most certainly after the Time War, she always found a way to take a stab at Missy, to be angry and nail a stake into the moral hill she would inevitably die on. This was nothing like that. Missy wasn’t being demonized or brushed aside. She was being dissected, and the things she didn’t say were being listened to. And it scared her more than she cared to admit. What happened to her in the future, the Doctor’s past, how long had it been since Skaro? “Why do you keep coming here...Missy? Why now?” The Doctor continued, and her voice dropped to a near whisper, confused and gentle, without judgement. Her insatiable need to _ fix it _was taking over, and Missy was shrinking into herself. 

“Does it matter? Isn’t this what you wanted when I was Harold _ Saxon_?” Missy was on the defensive now, nearly spitting her words, body stiff in the Doctor’s tensing form. 

“No! Well, I mean, _ yes_, it’s…” the Doctor scoffed, disbelieving, “lovely and terrifying to have you here just...talking and _ us_. Like _ this_...” she trailed off, head tilting down to Missy’s neck, her breath slow and hot on the skin there. There was a buzzing between them now, and Missy blinked. “But I’m curious what prompted it. What changed?” 

Missy’s frown deepened, brows furrowed, and as she stood there swaying with the Doctor she too wanted to know how it had gotten to this point. When had Missy gone from her chaotic, sinister toying to a softer, open teasing? When had the TARDIS become a welcomed resting place? Missy didn’t answer, but she could feel the pattern of the Doctor’s breathing, steady and slow, against her own body, and that was enough for her. 

“All I ever wanted from you, Missy, in _ any _ of your faces, was for you to let me in.” Missy could practically feel the Doctor frown then. “You’re shivering,” she breathed, confused, and Missy hadn’t even realized until the Doctor pointed it out. She did that now when she felt too vulnerable, laid bare, too seen. Then the Doctor let go of her hand and wrapped her free arm up around Missy’s back, holding her tight in a hug. Slowly, Missy wrapped her other arm down around the Doctor’s back, letting her head rest against the Doctor’s ear.

“I don’t think I can,” she mumbled. 

“You’re already doing it,” the Doctor whispered back. And Missy closed her eyes, focusing on the feeling of the Doctor’s body wrapped around hers, on getting swept up by the music. The slow, drooping sway of it. _ There _ was the nostalgia the Doctor was talking about. Hidden deep under the pain. And Missy knew she wouldn’t be coming back after this dance, not to this Doctor.


End file.
